Vibration behavior and excitation mechanism of ultra-stretchable triboelectric nanogenerator for wind energy harvesting

Abstract Wind is one of the cleanest energy sources, and various wind energy harvesters have been proposed. Here, we study the vibration behavior and excitation mechanism of an ultra-stretchable electrode film, using which the fabricated TENG device if for wind energy harvesting. The motion of the ultra-stretchable film in the flow is illustrated as a coupling of vortex-induced elastic torsional deformation and pressure-driven galloping. Aerodynamic models based on structural mechanics and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) are established to systematically elaborate the deformation characteristics. On the basis of aerodynamic characteristics, perforations are developed on the electrode film as geometric optimization to enhance performance of the TENG, in which the output power has been improved for 56.3% in comparison to the original device. This work firstly demonstrates the flow-induced vibration of the ultra-stretchable film in TENG, which may paves a way for improving the design of miniature wind energy harvesters.